Talk:Cocker Spaniel/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Xtzou (Talk) 19:20, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

(beginning review)

Xtzou (Talk) 19:20, 2 May 2010 (UTC)

Comments

• "Spaniels were first mentioned in the 14th century by Gaston III of Foix-Béarn in his work the Livre de Chasse. The "Cocking" or "Cocker Spaniel" was first mentioned as a type of field or land spaniel" - repeat of "first mentioned".

• "they can still appear very uncommonly to dark colored Cocker parents." - doesn't quite make sense to me.

• Is there no information on "Temperament", "Learning ability" or something that gives the reader a sense of the dog besides the physical dimensions?

Xtzou (Talk) 21:44, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Reworded the first two points. I probably should have placed a note on the talk page regarding the purpose of this article to help with the GA review. The article is meant as a dog type article, rather than a dog breed article and as such I've only given a historical and physical comparison between the two breeds as the other typical subjects for a breed (such as temperament etc) would in included in the relevant breed's article; and also because I felt that a specific comparison couldn't be made for those subjects.Miyagawa (talk) 22:31, 3 May 2010 (UTC)

Further comments

This sentence: "They were bred as gun dogs: to use their noses to methodically cover low areas near the handler so as to flush ground-dwelling birds into the air to be shot, to use their eyes and nose to locate the bird, and to gently extricate and retrieve the bird with a soft mouth." is too close to the wording of this website http://www.cockerspanielrage.org.uk/, in my opinion, which says "They were originally bred as gun dogs, using their noses to methodically cover low areas near the handler to flush ground-dwelling birds into the air." Needs some rewording. Otherwise, article looks fine.

Xtzou (Talk) 14:24, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

While it may need rewording, I'd like to note that this is my text. It was in the original version of this article I wrote for Wikipedia. A look at the history of the article will show that website lifted it from here, word for word, which is ok because Wikipedia is open source. It was a summary of information from a book and article I had, please see edit history for this article for the ISBN and such of the book I learned about this from, but "to gently extricate and retrieve the bird with a soft mouth, I remember vividly writing that because I was thinking about how my own dog does it even though I learned about it from the book Urban Gun Dogs and that dog hunting Magazine, I can get it back. So that's the reason the text is the same; Miyagawa rightly felt justified in using what might have been the only really good sentence in the whole little original article that this replaced, she didn't lift it from that cite, they just must have liked it so much and agreed with it that they decided it was good enough for them. It can't be a violation to use text that was so liked by a reliable source that it chose to lift it and use it in favor of it's own version. As a reliable source themselves, they are in a position to know if I made any errors of fact in it, so if this text passed their scrutiny, why can't it pass ours? This text passed out of Wikipedia, went through a reliable source, checked out by them, so liked by them that they used it. I think we can have it back if it orignated here and was so vetted. If it passed through their system, their experts must have looked at it and thought "That's exactly correct, I couldn't say it better myself, why don't I just lift this Wikipedia text and use it?" I'm not bragging, I think nothing else I wrote is left in this article, it wasn't good (I don't really write articles, but I do start them sometimes when I see a lacuna that needs filling, as this article does between the article spaniel and the specific breed articles, and then hope someone like Miyagawa will come along and do it right.) My point is that the fact that it's Wikipedia text doesn't mean it can't be cited to that reliable source.Chrisrus (talk) 05:58, 5 May 2010 (UTC)

Reworded that line. Thanks for rearranging the lead, looks good. Miyagawa (talk) 19:05, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

All looks fine. Note your comment about dog type article versus a dog breed article. Xtzou (Talk) 19:23, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

1. Is it reasonably well written?

   A. Prose quality: Clear and concise writing

   B. MoS compliance: Complies with the basic MoS

2. Is it factually accurate and verifiable?

   A. References to sources: Sources are reliable

   B. Citation of reliable sources where necessary: Well referenced

   C. No original research:

3. Is it broad in its coverage?

   A. Major aspects: Broad in scope

   B. Focused: } Remains focused on topic

4. Is it neutral?

   Fair representation without bias:

5. Is it stable?

   No edit wars, etc:

6. Does it contain images to illustrate the topic?

   A. Images are copyright tagged, and non-free images have fair use rationales:

   B. Images are provided where possible and appropriate, with suitable captions:

7. Overall:

   Pass or Fail: Pass!

Congratulations! Xtzou (Talk) 19:23, 4 May 2010 (UTC)